Plays Within Plays

Romantic Comedy

Written by Bernard Slade

Directed by Karen Bergreen

At Quincy House

BERNARD SLADE, WHOEVER he is, probably thought he was pretty clever when he wrote Romantic Comedy. There are lots of parallels between the play in which the actors are acting and the plays they are writing during the play. They discuss the characters in their plays as if they are really just characters, when everyone knows that these characters are really the actors in the play we are watching. Sound confusing and convoluted? It's really not--not enough, that is.

This play-within-a-play method is older than Shakepeare, who used it frequently to shed some light on what he wanted us to get out of his works. Yet Shakespeare's internal plays are never exact replicas of the outside play. We have to find the similarities and work to learn the lessons. But in Romantic Comedy, there is no effort required to see the similarities. As you might expect, the lessons to be learned aren't really rewarding: as they say, no pain, no gain.

The play is about the relationship between a playwright and his assistant over a 13-year period. There is nothing inherently funny about this situation, but a sequence of unusual conversations between the two characters, sprinkled with a few funny one-liners and the presence of several witty but incidental characters, make the play amusing, at least for the first act.

The playwright-within-the-play Jason Carmichael (David Fisher), an arrogant but talented man, marries a someone (Eliza Gleason) whom he doesn't really love. Then Jason meets Phoebe Craddock (Mira Sorvina), a young woman who idolizes him. But Jason doesn't realize that Phoebe loves him and treats her merely as a junior partner in their writing endeavors--although he obviously likes her presence.

This confusion in their relationship provides fuel for some rather amusing scenes. When they first meet, Jason thinks Phoebe is the masseur and greets her naked without a second thought. She, meeting her idol for the first time, takes some time before letting Jason know that she has not come to rub him down. When he finds out, he embarassingly says, "I don't normally greet people in the buff."

But their relationship, despite huge jumps in time between scenes--as much as 10 years in one leap--never goes anywhere until the very end of the play's two hours. Jason never gets any closer to recognizing Phoebe's real emotions towards him. In turn, she never comes any closer to telling Jason that she loves him. As a result, while the actors are able to maintain the quality of their performances, the play seems to stagnate in the middle of the second act.

ONE-LINERS CAN only carry a play so far. Soon you begin to want the play to go somewhere and the characters to develop noticeably or experience new events. But the characters in Romantic Comedy simply didn't change very much. Jason is as arrogant in the final scene as he is in the first. Perhaps a more conscious effort on the part of David Fisher to change his demeanor would improve this one-dimensionality, but the problem is probably inherent in the play.

The one exception to this lack of character development is Jason's wife. Eliza Gleason does change the personality of her character from a romantic youth to a somewhat independent and mature woman. Her manner becomes more forceful when she leaves Jason towards the middle of the play.

But overall, the personalities remain static, and this fact in combination with an unchanging set makes the play seem to drag on. Perhaps director Karen Bergreen should shorten it. In any case, Romantic Comedy is an enjoyable play for an hour-and-a-half. But prepare yourself for a long final half-hour.